We’ve long said that Countdown is fine Left Coast dinnertime entertainment: We enjoy a good rant with our supper, and Keith Olbermann can deliver a stemwinder when he’s moved.

We also certainly don’t mind when a couple of our graphics show up on his program. Based on past performance, we should see another in 2012 or so.

But despite the slant of its primetime hosts, and its new slogan, MSNBC still styles itself a news organization, with certain ethical standards required of all journalists: You shouldn’t kick bucks to a political campaign you’re covering. And if you do, you should disclose it — preferably to your audience, but at the very least to your management.

Olbermann crossed that last line with three campaign contributions, and it seems that his boss learned the news from a Politico reporter. This is not, shall we say, A Good Thing. Said boss promptly “suspended indefinitely” the title character from “Countdown with Keith Olbermann.”

And unleashed a shitstorm.

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Yahoo’s Michael Calderone, formerly Politico’s Michael Calderone, shows how a professional wordsmith gins up controversy where none exists:

As was the case with the Beck event, commentators and critics are having a hard time trying to pin down exactly what Stewart is up to this week leading into the event. The Comedy Central host sat down with President Obama and has regularly touted the show’s effort to assemble (as Beck also claimed to) disaffected individuals seeking sanity from the hyper-charged political atmosphere and 24/7 news cycle.

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And it doesn’t look a day over 13.7 billion!

But pay no attention to commie cosmology. We can state with the highest authority that Waste & Void replaced Absolute Nothingness on October 23, 4004 B.C. — and we can cite a highly recommended seventeenth-century source to prove it:

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We completely missed this a week ago, but the source image of the Vitter/Angle “Illegal Aliens” ad has been identified.

The photographer is Chris Floyd. He took the photo in Altar, Mexico. In 2006.

The men I met that morning in the Altar town square told me that they were farmers from the far south of Mexico and that that season’s crop had failed, leaving them with nothing to sell and no option, they felt, but to make the journey north to America to seek work. At the point that photograph was taken not one of them had ever set foot in America, and I have no idea if they ever did.

Floyd told the Washington Post he doesn’t know their names. Under the circumstances, they preferred to remain anonymous.

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Okay, one more, and then we’ll quit. Unless there’s another one.

But we like this one — even if it doesn’t mention us. It’s from a morning TV show. In Philadelphia. The same Philly TV station where Christine O’Donnell’s dad was a Redshirt Bozo. Allowing for ownership changes, of course.

The current owner? Rupert Murdoch. Channel 29 is a Fox O&O.

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Our guest columnist this morning is Google’s new Latin translator, helping us finally understand what that dummy Lorem Ipsum text means.

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Google lateris nescis [Kottke]

Lorem Ipsum (background and real translation)

What: Museum Day

Where: Creation & Earth History Museum, Santee, California

Time: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., today only!!!

Presentations:

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